It is my pleasure to announce that we have released Qt 5.6 Beta today, with binary installers available for convenient installation. Qt 5.6 will be a long-term supported release as we announced at the Qt World Summit in the beginning of October. This means Qt 5.6 support for 3 years along with additional patch-level releases. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights of the forthcoming release!

Long-Term Support

Qt 5.0.0 was released 3 years ago and we have done a huge amount of improvements since then. Therefore, we believe that it is time to create a Long-Term Supported (LTS) release with Qt 5.6. Our previous LTS release was Qt 4.8, which is running out of support in December. Most of you have already upgraded to Qt 5, but if you still have active projects in Qt 4 we encourage to migrate now.

Qt 5.6 will be supported for 3 years, after which additional extended support can be purchased. During this time period, even though following Qt releases (5.7 onwards) are already out, Qt 5.6 will receive parallel patch releases bringing bug fixes and security updates. We will also aim to provide support for new operating system and compiler versions when possible, however this can not be fully guaranteed even for an LTS release. Furthermore, it should be noted that the deprecated modules and technology preview modules are not subject to the LTS.

To build a foundation for the LTS Qt 5 release, we have been developing our continuous integration and releasing infrastructure. After all, as Qt is released and thoroughly tested on a multitude of different platforms and configurations, there is quite an infrastructure behind making all this possible. A new CI system, called Coin for COntinuos INtegration, has been developed and taken into use with Qt 5.6.

With the new CI system we are also using the binaries produced during the CI run in the Qt release packages. This prevents us from having to make new builds for packaging, saving time on integrating changes and creating new packages. In addition to time, the new approach saves a significant amount of CPU cycles in our cluster. Qt 5.6 Beta is the first release with CI produced binaries, so we ask that you please report all issues you encounter. This will help us fine-tune the system for RC and final.

High-DPI Support

One of the biggest new features coming with Qt 5.6 is a fully rewritten cross-platform High-DPI support. It allows applications written for standard resolution displays to be automatically scaled when shown on high-pixel-density displays. Using the new High-DPI support, Qt automatically adjusts font sizes, window elements, icons and graphics in general in a Qt application based on the pixel density. High-DPI support allows applications to adjust automatically even when the user moves a window from one display to another with a different pixel density.

Windows 10 Fully Supported + VS2015 binaries!

We have supported Windows 10 to a large extent already with Qt 5.5 and will now provide full support to both the win32 and WinRT APIs of Windows 10. Qt applications run on Windows 10 desktop PC’s, tablets and phones – and can be distributed via the Windows Store. For native Windows win32 applications moving to Windows 10 and the new WinRT API means a major rewrite, but with Qt is is a matter of simply compiling your application for WinRT.

In addition to Windows 10 support, Qt 5.6 also provided pre-built binaries for the Visual Studio 2015 compiler. Unfortunately, VS Add-In no longer works with VS2015, but we’ll update the VS Add-In for users of earlier Visual Studio versions with the release of Qt 5.6.0.

We have removed WebKit and Qt Quick 1 from Qt 5.6 release content. The source code is still available in the repositories, but these are not packaged with Qt 5.6 any more. Qt Script remains deprecated, but is included in Qt 5.6 release.

Qt 5.6 Timeline

With the Beta release now out, we hope to get a lot of feedback from you and will polish Qt 5.6 further towards the Release Candidate and 5.6.0 final in the coming months. We are targeting to release the Qt 5.6.0 LTS final in Q1/2016.

With Qt 5.6 we are introducing the first Long Term Supported (LTS) release of the Qt 5 series. There will be several Qt 5.6.x patch level releases created during the next three years – also after the next Qt 5.x releases become available. Commercial licensees eligible for technical support will also be able to submit support requests longer for the LTS release.

Current LTS release has been Qt 4.8, and with its support ending at the end of 2015, it is time to introduce the next LTS release. Qt 5.0.0 was released three years ago and we have done a huge amount of improvements since then, as well as provided many good and widely used releases. Thanks to recent improvements in our releasing infrastructure we now have a sustainable way of developing parallel Qt releases with different sets of supported platforms and compilers.

As our LTS promise, we guarantee that Qt 5.6 will be supported for three years via standard support, after which additional extended support can be purchased. During this time period, even though following Qt releases (5.7 onwards) are already out, Qt 5.6 will receive patch releases providing bug fixes and security updates. Typically we have provided just one or two patch level releases for each Qt 5.x release, and this is planned to continue also in the future for the non-LTS releases. For Qt 5.6 LTS release the amount of patch releases will be higher, as we aim to provide these throughout the three year period.

With Qt 5.6 we will also roll out a change to the commercial support terms and conditions to recognize LTS versions of Qt, with the three year standard support period. At the same time we are reducing the standard support on non-LTS releases of Qt to be one year. There will be an option to purchase extended support for both LTS and non-LTS releases. The changed support terms do not affect already released Qt 5.x releases, these are supported two years from the release of next Qt version, as defined in the current support terms.

In addition to security fixes, error corrections and improvements provided by the LTS patch releases, we may also add support for new operating system and compiler versions to an LTS release of Qt, when possible. It should be noted that the deprecated modules and technology preview modules are not subject to the LTS.

We had a strong focus on improving quality and providing feature parity between different platforms with Qt 5.5, for example in multimedia and connectivity areas, and have continued to improve further in Qt 5.6. Our aim is to provide a solid baseline with support for C++98 and C++11 compilers, just like before. The next release, Qt 5.7, will drop support for older compilers allowing us to leverage C++11 functionality in the Qt modules themselves. So for those wishing to use compilers such as VS2008, VS2010, and gcc 4.6, Qt 5.6 continues to be an excellent choice in the years to come.

The Qt 5.6 Beta release is now available, check it out if you have not yet done so. We are working hard to further fix and polish it with the target of having the Qt 5.6.0 final out in Q1/2016.

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